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Student teachers will be given scholarships worth up to
$8000 if they agree to work in understaffed schools or hard-to-staff
subjects such as maths and languages for at least three years.

The
State Government is offering the scholarships as part of its latest round
of cash incentives for teachers, which are designed to fill long-standing
vacancies in rural or outer-suburban schools.

Last week The Age
reported student teachers would also be given cash bonuses of up to $900
if they agreed to work in traditionally understaffed schools.

Under the
scheme, students will be eligible for three types of scholarships. The
most lucrative will give final-year students $4000 if they work in a
hard-to-staff subject at a hard-to-staff school. They will then get an
additional $4000 retention bonus, to be paid as a lump sum, if they stay
at the school for at least three years.

Teachers who work in a
hard-to-staff subject or a hard-to-staff school will get a $2000 bonus at
the start of their fourth year. Hard-to-staff subjects include maths,
languages other than English - especially Indonesian, Italian and German -
physical education, special education and information
technology.

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Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan said the
initiative would give new teachers guaranteed full-time employment in the
school where they take up their appointment.

But Opposition education
spokesman Victor Perton said the plan did not go far enough to tackle the
number of teachers who shun Victorian schools to take up positions at
overseas schools in Britain, the US or Asia.

"When you compare it to
what the Brits are paying as a sign-up bonus . . . it doesn't sound like
much," Mr Perton said.

He said the Government should take the advice of
one of its own expert panels, which had suggested recruiting teachers from
overseas. Performance pay would also provide a better career structure to
attract people to the profession, Mr Perton said.

The Australian
Education Union welcomed the scholarship scheme. Union branch president
Mary Bluett said that filling vacancies in hard-to-staff subjects had
become such a problem in some schools that principals were denying
teachers long service leave in fear they may be too hard to replace.

At
one Victorian school, a teacher of Indonesian was forced to take her leave
application to the Merit Protection Board - the peak appeals body for
teachers - after it was rejected three times by her school.

Alexandra
Secondary College principal Ross Bevege - who has tried for two years to
find a suitably qualified teacher for woodwork, metal and automotive
classes - said the scholarships would help attract and retain much-needed
teachers.

Not finding the right teachers, he said, "can really have a
devastating effect on the type of curriculum a school is able to
offer".

"Sometimes you've even got to bring in a teacher who doesn't
necessarily have the right qualifications to teach a subject," Mr Bevege
said.

Rainbow Secondary College principal Robyn Bellinger also welcomed
the initiative. She has tried since the start of the term to fill an
information communications technology position. "It's excellent," she
said.